


The Squirrel

by fusilier



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Long, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 19:39:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17904326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fusilier/pseuds/fusilier
Summary: Rinna, a half-elf nationalist becomes caught up in politics, adventure, and revenge.  Elements of the Witcher books and the games will be present in this story.





	The Squirrel

She ran.

Goose feather tailed arrows chased her, slamming into tree trunks in explosions of bark all around her. She vaulted over a dead tree and the earth rumbled beneath her feet when she landed. Heavy, black-clad warhorses thundered through the underbrush. Shouts echoed past her, the horses closed in. Pain, as an arrow grazed her thigh and threw her to the ground.

 

*

 

"But you can't be a knight! You're not a boy!"

"So!? I can be a knight if I wish!"

"No you can't, you're a girl!" The boys all chimed in. "Girls can't be knights. Besides, you're an elf, and everyone knows there are no elf-knights. Ow!" The young boy's brief speech on the eligibility of knighthood was cut short by a whack with a stick. "She hit me!"

"I can be a knight if I so please. In fact I'm going to be one when I grow up." The girl proclaimed proudly, whirling her stick, or knight's sword, around in the air. "And I'm not an elf, I'm a half-elf."

"Girls still can't be knights." Another of the boys quietly explained later, after lunch. "It's just how it is, Rinny. But I'll be a knight." He assured her. "And you can marry me. You can be the wife of a knight."

"But I don't want to be the wife of a knight. I want to be a knight. With my own horse. A sword. No, two swords! And, and....pretty silver armor. That way no one could ever hurt me."

 

*

 

She rolled hard and caught a sharp rock in her midsection, drawing blood. The shouts grew excited. "Catch her!" "Kill her!" "We've got her!"  
They didn't have her. Not yet. Winded, she swore and wheezed as she forced herself up and into a run again. The forest was too light here. She needed to make it further into the trees, where the dense brush would hinder the horses.

She ran.

 

*

 

"Mummy? Why can't I have been a boy?" 

"Rinna please don't speak with your mouth full. I've told you before. We live in Toussaint dear, manners are expected."

Rinna gulped down her mouthful of stew and set her spoon down on the table politely, before asking again. "Mummy -"

"Yes, a boy. Dear...We don't get to choose what we are. Only who we are. There was no magical pos...magical type of hug your father and I could have done to make you a boy. Or a girl for that matter. Birth is more or less random. Anyway, girls are better than boys." Aemmilinn, or Aemmil to some, Mummy to even fewer, grinned her deviously beautiful elven smile at her daughter. "Your supper is getting cold."

"Yes mummy."

"Why do you want to be a boy, anyway?" Aemmil asked after a sip of her wine. The candelight flickered against the glass.

"They said girls can't be knights. That only boys can be knights and that's the way it is and always will be. And because I'm a half-elf." Rinna pouted.

"Well..." Aemmil considered, her glass in hand again. "You may want to be something else when you're older. There's no use deciding now. Things change. Drastically, dear. Forget about it. Those boys are silly. And about you being, well, half-elf, perhaps I should pay the school a visit. What do they teach those boys if not manners? Racism is not polite, no matter how subtle."

"What's raysism mummy?"

"Never you mind."

"Can papa go talk to them instead? That'll show them. A knight could wallop them all with one hand!"

"Your father isn't back for another three days, Rinna. I'll speak to them. I will not tolerate racism in a place of learning, especially that establishment. Gods know we pay enough..."

 

*

 

The trees began to stand closer to one another. Closer and closer, until branches intertwined and their bushy heads formed one solid roof, which hid the sun, for as far forward as the eye could see. The ground no longer rumbled as black-clad horsemen were forced to dismount their black-clad beasts. Arrows still chased after her, though few penetrated the thickening forest. She cleared twenty more paces then dropped into cover behind a tree, trying to hear over her breathing. The earth was quiet. The trees still.

Her pursuers had not followed her into the forest. For this was the Brokilon Forest, where men dared not enter. A forest where travellers disappeared in, where warning arrows shot out of the dark at rowdy merchants and soldiers on the road beside it. Warning arrows that said 'Stop, do not come any closer. Turn around and go back whence you came, or the next arrow will be the end of you.'

Yet here she was. Alive, though naked and bleeding.

And being watched.


End file.
